Inheritance
They didn’t tell me, when I moved to Phoenix
that I would have to bring my own water.
That was OK, of course, since I’d been born in Chicago
and had the entire Lake Michigan at my disposal.
My parents still live in a hut
in Saugatuak. I ask them to send my share
of the Great Lake, my birthright,
in individual plastic bottles.
It comes by train. My wrist is sore
from cap-twisting and though I only take
sips, the ounces last for barely an hour.
Some days even I,
as I lie in February, under my blossoming
bougainvillea, listening to the freeway
moan along without me,
dream of the lake’s sandy beaches
that take up the even snow.
With Gary, Indiana to my back,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin to my front,
the white smoothes me plain.
The snow snows there in three full
states, maybe more. The snow has flattened my
Chicago like it flattened the whole
Midwest but thanks to that one-note
frozen landscape, I reach across whole
states and across them my visibly wet breath.
Poem A Day 